The present invention relates generally to a system for vending products or services by the use of a standard ID card, such as a driver's license.
It is sometimes desirable to vend products or to provide services only after certain information has been provided by the consumer. For example, in order to vend age-restricted products, such as alcohol or cigarettes, the age of the consumer must be verified in advance of the purchase, typically by having the vendor visually check the consumer's driver's license to verify his date of birth. In another example, it may be desirable to vend gasoline to a consumer only after the validity of his driver's license has been verified.
To make the vending process more efficient, it is desirable to electronically automate the receipt of such pertinent information from the customer. But this is generally only possible if the consumer has some form of identification capable of storing such information in an electronic form. When one reviews the forms of identification typically held and carried by consumers, one finds two primary forms of identification—credit cards and driver's licenses. In this respect, “credit cards” should be understood to refer to other similar types of issued cards, such as debit cards, store-issued credit cards, bank-issued automatic teller machine (ATM) cards, and “smart cards” which contain integrated circuitry. However, both of these forms of identification have drawbacks when applied to automating the process of gathering information about the consumer in advance of the vending of products and services.
Credit cards typically contain magnetic strips or integrated circuitry that contain some amount of consumer information. However, credit cards are of limited utility in facilitating the automated information gathering process discussed above. First, not all consumers carry credit cards, especially many younger consumers. Second, the electronic information contained on credit cards is not always sufficient to allow an assessment of the propriety of vending a particular product to a given consumer. For example, credit cards typically do not contain information concerning the consumer's age or date of birth, a necessary piece of information for automating the vending of age-restricted products. Third, credit cards, especially store-issued credit cards, typically only allow for the purchase of those products or services sold by that store, and are therefore of limited utility. Fourth, the electronic information contained on credit cards is sometimes encrypted, or stored in formats unknown and undecipherable to the vendors. In short, credit cards, in their various formats, are generally not a suitable mechanism for gathering information about a consumer in advance of the vending of products and services.
Driver's licenses present an attractive means of gathering consumer information because they are widely held. However, driver's licenses, like credit cards, have historically been of limited utility for this purpose. First, driver's licenses come in many different formats, with each state issuing its own unique license. This makes automatic information gathering difficult for a vending system which is to operate on a nationwide (or international) scale. Second, not all states' driver's licenses contain a means for electronically storing information about the consumer. For example, not all states issue driver's licenses that contain a magnetic strip element. Third, even as to the driver's licenses that do contain electronic means of storing consumer information, the information may be limited, encrypted, or stored in formats unknown and undecipherable to the vendors, and thus suffer from the same problems as credit cards. Fourth, even if driver's licenses were suitable to automate the information gathering process, they lack the means for allowing consumers to pay for the purchase, and therefore have been of limited utility in automating the entire vending process.
A specific problem already mentioned is the vending of age-restricted products. Most, if not all, states impose minimum age requirements for the purchase of certain products such as alcohol, tobacco products, and other age-restricted products. In order to purchase such products, the customer traditionally must present identification to the seller to verify his or her age prior to the transaction. The inability to verify the customer's age prevents age-restricted products from being sold in vending machines in an automated fashion. This verification process is particularly problematic in the vending machine industry since vending machines, by their very nature, involve unattended point-of-purchase transactions. Some examples of prior approaches to this problem or related problems can be found in the following U.S. patents, all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,884,212; 5,139,384; 5,146,067, 5,273,183; 5,352,876; 5,371,346; 5,450,980; 5,523,551; 5,641,050; 5,641,092; 5,647,505; 5,696,908; 5,722,526; 5,734,150; 5,774,365; 5,819,981; 5,859,779; 5,927,544; 5,988,346; 5,147,021; 4,982,072; 4,915,205; and 4,230,214.
Some prior art vending approaches, such as that of Sharrard, U.S. Pat No. 5,722,526, have contemplated using drivers licenses or other identification cards to verify the customer's age. In the Sharrard system, a customer inputs money into the vending machine and makes his or her selection. Thereafter, the customer is prompted to input an identification card such as a state government issued identification card or a driver's license containing the customer's birth date. The vending machine either optically reads the written birth date on the face of the card, or reads the birth date data from a magnetic strip contained on the back of the card. A processor unit compares this data with the present date that is keyed into the vending machine by its operator, and determines whether the customer is of a sufficient age to purchase the product.
Sharrard's disclosure notwithstanding, it is difficult to implement Sharrard's technique for age verification. As noted previously, not all driver's licenses contain magnetic strips, and even for those that do, age data may not be present on the strip or may be difficult to extract. Further, despite Sharrard's general disclosure of the idea of optically scanning a driver's license to extract age data, such a process is not disclosed or enabled in Sharrard, but is merely noted as a good idea.
Some prior art approaches such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,927,544, issued to Kanoh, suggests that age information can be “recorded on the [credit] card” to verify a vending customer's age for the purpose of vending age-restricted products, see Kanoh, Col. 4, 11. 55-58, but the present inventors submit that such information is in fact rarely present on a standard credit card. Although consumer reporting agencies, such as TRW and Equifax, and other credit card companies such as VISA or MasterCard, store information in databases for a large number of consumers, conventional vending machines are unable to access such information to verify the age of a purchaser. Those prior art vending machines that have connectivity to such databases contemplate using the database to verify credit or password information, but do not disclose or suggest using such databases to verify age. See Kanoh, Col. 4, 11. 37-42 (noting that the microprocessor in his vending machine enables “a credit card company to check credit card numbers, personal identification code numbers, and other data via a communications link,” but not mentioning age data).
What is needed is a highly flexible system for vending products and services that (1) can be implemented on a nationwide (or international) scale, (2) is fully automated, (3) is capable of extracting necessary information from a consumer to assist in the vending process, and (4) is capable of remotely managing and updating an unlimited number of vending machines. Additionally, such a system would be further advantaged by (1) providing means for allowing for the payment of the products and services vended, (2) being implementable by making only minor modifications to otherwise standard vending equipment, and (3) having the capability to vend a wide array of products and services. Such a system is disclosed herein.